“I do want to acknowledge our great congressional team that represents this area. We of course have Congressman Mike Honda, and I think everyone says good things about Congressman Honda. And the one thing that I can add, having been in Washington, is Congressman Honda of course is an outstanding representative for our area but he is also the one person in the entire United States Congress who, if there’s an issue concerning the Asian-American community anywhere, or if there’s an issue the administration wants to know about Asia, they go to Congressman Honda. So it’s a privilege to have him from this area.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly leads a legislative committee on elections and he expects you to vote for him in June’s primary. But voting records show he failed to cast ballots in about half of the elections held since 1995. He missed a 2009 special election called to decide whether to temporarily increase taxes, a June 2008 statewide primary and 2002’s general election. That’s the year former Gov. Gray Davis was reelected to a second term.

In all, the state assemblyman and Tea Party darling from Twin Peaks only voted in 19 of 37 elections from 1995 to 2013, according to San Bernadino County records. Continue Reading →

When she woke up last Friday, San Mateo County sheriff’s deputy Rebecca Rosenblatt learned there had been a rollover DUI around 5:30 a.m. on Highway 92 leading to Half Moon Bay.

“Oh, man,” Rosenblatt remembers thinking. “Today’s going to be bad.”
The sheriff’s public information officer figured the driver, Ric Acosta of San Lorenzo, might have been on the way to the Mavericks Invitational, a big-wave surfing contest that draws upward of 10,000 people to tiny Princeton-by-the-Sea off Highway 1, requiring an all-hands-on-deck approach by local public safety and law enforcement personnel.
But Acosta wasn’t a Mavericks early-bird, just a guy bound for jail, and the rest of the day went smoothly. Traffic congestion was mild, Rosenblatt said, and there were no arrests and only a few minor medical issues during the contest, which ended around 3 p.m. People generally followed the new rules about staying away from the ecologically sensitive/occasionally dangerous beach and bluffs near the surf break off Pillar Point.
All in all it was a good day for the Mavericks organization, which has had two good years in a row after a three-year period from 2009 to 2011 that was marred by chaos, infighting, financial problems and injuries to spectators.
Still, some things in life are unavoidable: Like people getting rowdy after 12 hours of drinking.

When a federal judge recently found the U.S. government violated a former Stanford University doctoral student’s rights by putting her on its super-secret “no fly” list, it was a big win for San Jose lawyer Jim McManis and his law firm, McManis Faulkner.

It was the first ruling in the country finding that the Department of Homeland Security’s anti-terrorism program had some constitutional flaws. But it appears there may be a steep price to taxpayers for the government’s handling of Rahinah Ibrahim’s plight (she was branded a terrorism suspect in 2005, and has fought in court since that time to clear her name).

The McManis firm last week asked a federal judge to order the government to pay $3.6 million in legal fees for successfully representing Ibrahim, as well as nearly $300,000 more in litigation costs. Continue Reading →

From our Department of Historical Footnotes: Pete Seeger, the singer and songwriter who died Monday at the age of 94, was rightly acclaimed for such songs as “If I had a Hammer” and “Where Have all the Flowers Gone?” But for folk music fans living in San Jose during the Vietnam War era, he might be best remembered for a concert he gave at the Civic Auditorium on Sept. 28, 1967.
Although it took 20 minutes for Seeger to warm up his voice, the crowd was enraptured by his new song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,’’ an anti-war piece that seemed to take aim at then-president Lyndon Johnson (“and the big fool said to push on.’’) Continue Reading →

Following reports yesterday from IA and other media outlets that Starbucks had bailed on a potential new San Jose coffee shop, the coffee giant responded Wednesday by saying it had nothing to do with the controversy over potential city-mandated wages for baristas.

In fact, a Starbucks spokeswoman said the company lost interest in a kiosk at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center after staff at City Hall never responded to the company’s letter of interest.

“We were interested in pursuing the location but we actually never heard back from the city,” spokeswoman Laurel Harper said. “It has nothing to do with the city’s living wage policy.” Continue Reading →

The political fight at San Jose City Hall over how much money a Starbucks barista should make has become moot after the coffee giant decided to pull out of plans for a new shop at a city-owned facility.

At issue was whether the Starbucks would have to comply with the city’s policy for businesses to pay employees a “living wage” when entering into public contracts. While few would call serving lattes a public service, the question arose because the contract would be with the city at the taxpayer-owned San Jose McEnery Convention center.

If the policy were to be enforced, Starbucks would have to pay the current living wage rate of $15.78 an hour, instead of the standard minimum wage of $10.15. Starbucks had said it couldn’t make its business work based on the higher pay rates for employees. Continue Reading →

When state lawmakers agreed to honor one of their own by naming the western stretch of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge after Willie Brown, the charismatic former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco mayor, they left unsaid who would pay for signage. The assumption was supporters would raise the money privately.
Well we are told that the NAACP has succeeded in raising the roughly $6,500 cost of producing and installing signs, and that a dedication ceremony is planned for Feb. 11 near where the span crosses Yerba Buena Island. Continue Reading →

In the middle of a drought, you might be conserving water at your house: You’re not watering your lawn. You’re careful with your showers. But somebody didn’t let the Santa Clara Valley Water District, fondly known here as the Golden Spigot, know quickly enough.
For the last month, the water district has been running an ad campaign – on radio, buses, newspapers and web sites – warning people that flood season is coming. The star is Charles “Chicken’’ Little, who appears under an umbrella with these cheery words: “You may remember me as that panicky bird who ran around yelling, the sky is falling. Well, after years of meditation, I’m now helping Santa Clara County residents prepare for flood season.’’
Here’s the problem: It’s been evident for some time that floods are not coming anytime soon. Continue Reading →